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Royal Alfred Hotel

Known in the earliest part of the nineteenth century as the Union Inn, No 28 William Street became the Royal Alfred Hotel in 1844 and later more simply just the Royal Alfred. The reason for the renaming was undoubtedly the birth of Queen Victoria’s fourth child Prince Alfred Ernest Albert, affectionately known as “Affie” and later to be made Duke of Edinburgh. Alfred would later visit Plymouth on a number of occasions – it was he who laid the foundation stone for the rebuilding of Smeaton’s Tower on the Hoe in 1882. Sadly however Alfred died before his mother, in 1900, at the age of 55, he was the third of Victoria’s children to die in her lifetime, strangely she also lost three son-in-laws too.

As for the pub itself, it closed in September 1959, the same month that this photograph was taken. William Street was closed soon afterwards and the land incorporated within the new extension to the Keyham Yard.